Sermons Quotes - Page 2

• The longest way round is the shortest way home. (Quoting Alexander MacLaren, The Wearied Christ and Other Sermons)

  C. S. Lewis

  Home, Way, Christ

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• In a sermon entitled “God's Providence,” C. H. Spurgeon said, “Napoleon once heard it said, that man proposes and God disposes. 'Ah,' said Napoleon, 'but I propose and dispose too.' How do you think he proposed and disposed? He proposed to go and take Russia; he proposed to make all Europe his. He proposed to destroy that power, and how did he come back again? How had he disposed it? He came back solitary and alone, his mighty army perished and wasted, having well-nigh eaten and devoured one another through hunger. Man proposes and God disposes.

  Jerry Bridges

  Army, Men, Thinking

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• Preaching is compelling to young secular adults ...
  - not if preachers use video clips from their favorite movies and dress informally and sound sophisticated,
  - but if the preachers understand their hearts and culture so well that listeners feel the force of the sermon's reasoning, even if in the end they don't agree with it.

  Timothy Keller

  Heart, Sound, Adults

  Timothy Keller (2013). “Gospel Renewal: Center Church, Part Two”, p.74, Harper Collins

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• Humanly speaking, it is possible to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. But Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience - not interpreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Jesus, Mean, Simple

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• If God is not with us, we do not want to continue. If the Sermon on the Mount is simply impractical, our mission work is hopeless. We have no backup plan. We have nothing but Him.

  Heidi Baker

  Want, Hopeless, Missions

  Heidi Baker, Shara Pradhan (2008). “Compelled by Love”, p.159, Charisma Media

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• Sermons remain one of the last forms of public discourse where it is culturally forbidden to talk back.

  Harvey Cox

  Lasts, Form, Forbidden

  Harvey Cox (2013). “The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective”, p.261, Princeton University Press

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• In the sermon I have just preached, whenever I said Aristotle, I meant St. Paul.

  William Archibald Spooner

  Said

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• One cannot seperate truth from actions...Physically inevitable or not, truth stands above all things. It is independant of who has the best army, who can deliver the longest sermons, or even who has the most priests. It can be pushed down, but it will always surface. Truth is the one thing you can never intimidate.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Army, Action, Truth Is

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• Children are more influenced by sermons you act than by sermons you preach.

  David O. McKay

  Children, Learning, Influence

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• No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to "spiritual" subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history's most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.

  Wendell Berry

  Spiritual, Soul, Wonder

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.96, Counterpoint

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• A person cannot coast along in old destructive habits year after year and accept whatever comes along. A person must stand up on her own two legs and walk. Get off the bus and go get on another. Climb out of the ditch and cross the road. Find the road that s where you want to go. ... The only sermon that counts is the one that is formed by our actions. She would quit drinking and thereby show Kyle life is what you make it. A person can grab hold of her life and change things for the better. This happens all the time. We are not chips of wood drifting down the stream of time. We have oars.

  Garrison Keillor

  Drinking, Years, Two

  Garrison Keillor (2011). “Pontoon: A Lake Wobegon Novel”, p.96, Faber & Faber

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• The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is not--Do your duty, but--Do what is not your duty. It is not your duty to go the second mile, to turn the other cheek, but Jesus says if we are His disciples we shall always do these things. There will be no spirit of--"Oh, well, I cannot do any more, I have been so misrepresented and misunderstood". . . Never look for right in the other man, but never cease to be right yourself. We are always looking for justice; the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is--Never look for justice, but never cease to live it.

  Oswald Chambers

  Jesus, Teaching, Men

  Oswald Chambers (1985). “My Utmost for His Highest”

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• The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works, but rather who God is.

  Stanley Hauerwas

  Who God Is, Ethics, Bases

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• She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

  E. M. Forster

  Love, Passion, Men

  Howards End (1910) ch. 22 (the title-page also has "Only connect...")

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• Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Book, Love You

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• All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated....As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

  John Donne

  Book, Men, Islands

  1624 Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation no.17.

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• Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.

  Lord Byron

  Laughter, Drinking, Food

  'Don Juan' (1819-24) canto 2, st. 178

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• A Baby Sermon- The lighting and thunder, they go and they come: But the stars and the stillness are always at home

  George MacDonald

  Baby, Stars, Home

  George MacDonald (1871). “Violin songs. Songs of the days and nights. A book of dreams. Roadside poems. Poems for children”, p.252

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• I've never preached one sermon on money, on just finances. I want to stay away from it.

  Joel Osteen

  Want, Abundance, Finance

  "Joel Osteen doesn't preach just to the choir". Interview with Jamie Gangel, www.today.com. February 1, 2005.

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• It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher.

  George Whitefield

  Christian, Spiritual, Giving

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• Had I become a priest, the sermons would've been electric!

  Johnny Vegas

  Priests, Electric

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• No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

  Mark Twain

  Inspiration, Twenties, Firsts

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• Modern-day cinema takes the form of a sermon. You don't get to think, you only get to receive information.

  Gus Van Sant

  Thinking, Cinema, Information

  "All the world's an art school" by Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. January 24, 2004.

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• And I don't have to listen to a sermon to know what to think or feel about them. It's almost as if I absorbed completely what mattered most to me, and the rest could go.

  Anna Quindlen

  Thinking, Feels, Knows

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• A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon, must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation.

  Pope Francis

  Beautiful, Firsts, Salvation

  Pope Francis (2015). “Encountering Truth: Meeting God in the Everyday”, p.18, Image

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